Department: Hasso Plattner Institute of Design

Code Name Description
DESIGN101 History and Ethics of Design Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. In this class we will examine the history of design, the challenges that designers at different historical moments have had to face and the ethical questions that have arisen from those cho...
DESIGN11 Visual Thinking ME101 is the foundation class for all designers and creative people at Stanford. It teaches you how to access your creativity through a series of projects. Visual thinking, a powerful adjunct to other problem solving modalities, is developed and exer...
DESIGN121 Introduction to Human Values in Design An intensive project-based class that introduces the central philosophy of the product design program. Students learn how to use the lens of human needs to innovate at the intersection of technical factors (feasibility), business factors (viability)...
DESIGN131 Advanced Product Design: Needfinding Human needs that lead to the conceptualization of future products, environments, systems, and services. Field work in public and private settings; appraisal of personal values; readings on social ethnographic issues; and needfinding for a corporate c...
DESIGN141 Product Design Methods This course will introduce the basic concepts of human factors and demonstrate the importance of understanding and considering human capabilities and limits in product and system design. This will include an overview of both cognitive and physical hu...
DESIGN151 Designing Your Business Designing Your Business introduces business concepts and personal capabilities to designers critical to the development, launch, and success of new products and services in for-profit and social enterprises. Functionally, students will learn to build...
DESIGN161A Advanced Product Design: Capstone 1 Team-based project using knowledge, methodology, and skills obtained in the Product Design major. Students will form a team, identify an opportunity space of interest, and design and implement a product (digital, physical, experiential, ... ) within...
DESIGN161B Advanced Product Design: Capstone 2 ME216C is a continuation of ME216B. Students will complete the development process and make their product 'real in the world' in ways that are appropriate to the type of product being developed. Prerequisites: ME216A and ME216B.
DESIGN170 Visual Frontiers The student will learn how to use graphic design to communicate online, in person, and through printed matter. Fundamentals of visual communications will be applied to branding exercises, typographic studies, color explorations, drawing exercises, us...
DESIGN172 Design Sketching Design Visualization, offers students a unique opportunity to acquire a new (visual) language over the span of one short quarter. Imagine a process whereby you can close your eyes, and, after a few short weeks, leveraging established Design Principle...
DESIGN173 Digital Design Principles and Applications Building upon foundation design principles, project-based individual / group exploration and critique facilitates a self-guided learning process, where analytical problem-solving approaches are cultivated through real-time implementation in digital t...
DESIGN187N How to Shoot for the Moon The new space industry has the potential to impact and sustain life on Earth and beyond. For example, emerging space technology can shape the way we design habitats, food, and spacecraft for low-Earth orbit or the Lunar surface, as well as the produc...
DESIGN191 Independent Study and Research Directed study and research for undergraduates on a subject of mutual interest to student and staff member. Student must find faculty sponsor and have approval of adviser.
DESIGN191A Curricular Practical Training For undergraduate students. Meets the requirements for curricular practical training for students on F-1 visas. Student is responsible for arranging own internship/employment and faculty sponsorship. Register under faculty sponsor's section number. A...
DESIGN204 FORBIDDEN DESIGN Slightly controversial and built with designers concerned with both great products and social impact in mind, Forbidden Design seizes the unique times we find ourselves in where products and innovations that were once deemed forbidden or even illegal...
DESIGN231 Graduate Design Research Techniques Students from different backgrounds work on real-world design challenges. The Design Thinking process with emphasis on: ethnographic techniques, needfinding, framing and concept generation. The Design Thinking process as a lens to explore ways to bet...
DESIGN236P Print on Purpose Operating at an intersection of visual expression and freedom of speech, Print on Purpose investigates how social justice is imprinted in our local, national, and global consciousness. From lawn signs to newspapers to zines to posters to pamphlets to...
DESIGN238 Judging Historical Significance Through the Automobile This seminar is for students who are interesting in the future of sustainable mobility and to view that challenge through the historic lens of some of the world¿s greatest cars. Students will participate in discussions from a number of perspectives...
DESIGN240 Creative Gym: A Design Thinking Skills Studio Build your creative confidence and sharpen your design thinking skills. Train your intuition and expand the design context from which you operate every day. This experimental studio will introduce d.school students to fast- paced experiential exercis...
DESIGN241 Synthesizing Information : A Design Abilities Studio Learn to leap from information to insight to inference. We live in an era of information overload. Whether that information already exists, or we are creating it with our own research, it can be hard to make the leap between raw data and meaningful i...
DESIGN245 Redesigning Finance Why does finance need redesigning? Finance is something we all have to navigate yet remains complex and elusive to crack for many. It's a system that often does the opposite of design thinking: breaks down around nuance and reinforces exclusionary pr...
DESIGN248 Methods in Co-Design Join us to learn the methods of co-design, the practice of designing WITH and not FOR communities. We'll explore how to identify projects well suited for co-design, how to shift from the "hero" to the "host" as designers, and how to practice cutting...
DESIGN255 The Design of Data Learn the art of telling stories with visual information.Our world is increasingly complex and laden with many forms of measurable data. Infographics abound, but whether explicit or not, the stories they tell are all designed. In this hands-on course...
DESIGN259 Inventing the Future The famous computer scientist, Alan Kay, once said, "The best way to predict the future is to invent it." As such, we are all responsible for inventing the future we hope we and our descendants will experience. In this highly interactive course, we w...
DESIGN261 Upstreaming Health Reimagine systems to make everyday life healthier by design. Good health doesn¿t begin the minute someone walks into a doctor¿s office. If we want everyday life to become healthier by default, we need to shift our interventions from downstream to ups...
DESIGN262 Design for Healthy Behaviors Design for Healthy Behaviors, started in 2010, is a course for grad students and undergrads of all disciplines. Students will work in teams of two directly with a patient-volunteer, all of whom are managing chronic health conditions, on a quarter-lon...
DESIGN263 Design for Health: Building Early Relational Health We aim to address key challenges in early relational health, which is defined as healthy and positive and nurturing parent/caregiver child relationships, in the context of safe and secure communities. One in 4 adults in the US has an adverse child ex...
DESIGN264 Design for Health We aim to address intransigent problems in health, which have been resistant to change through traditional healthcare-delivery, public-health and academic medical systems. We aim to develop key insights and solutions to address social and technical c...
DESIGN271 Policy Practicum: Justice By Design Legal aid groups, government agencies, and state courts offer free help to people experiencing housing, debt, family, and other major life problems. This policy lab will examine how to make this legal help more accessible, trusted, and impactful. How...
DESIGN272 Justice by Design: Moving Forward from Dobbs This policy lab will build on the work of the Fall 2022 policy lab that researched three specific issues related to the Dobbs decision: medical abortion, restrictions on travel, and issues related to the collection and dissemination of information be...
DESIGN273 Negotiation by Design: Applied Design Thinking for Negotiators Where many stakeholders are working within a complex scenario, the skilled negotiator is comfortable with the inherent ambiguity, at once nimble and careful in responding to new information and changing positions. In this advanced negotiation course,...
DESIGN276 Design for Business: How to Scale Organizational Culture The reset button was hit; COVID-19 accelerated changes to work and the reshuffling of the workforce. Work is becoming a lot more digital, distributed, remote, and in many ways, transactional. This is a pristine moment for organizations small and big...
DESIGN278 DESIGN FOR BELONGING: FOOD JUSTICE In this class students will learn how to design for belonging as it relates to one of our most essential needs: food. The course asks: How food access experiences are structured to support belonging (or not) and how can they be? We will look at eleme...
DESIGN282 Designing Machine Learning: A Multidisciplinary Approach A multidisciplinary, human-centered approach to designing systems of machine learning and AI intended to empower a new and more diverse generation of innovators.As machine learning makes its way into all kinds of products, systems, spaces, and experi...
DESIGN283Q Tinkering with Inequity in Emerging Tech A historically-informed and multidisciplinary approach to designing emerging technologies like AI, the metaverse, NFTs, IOT, and the systems in which they exist to be equitable.Throughout history, innovations in science and technology, while bold and...
DESIGN287 Design for Play During this unique moment in time, with the pandemic still looming, and racial reckoning in America, the importance and the role of play in designing experiences is an essential tool that enables us to collectively navigate ambiguity, build trust and...
DESIGN292 Design for Learning: Co-Designing Connection and Community Would you like to take an introductory class to get started on how design can work for you? Are you interested in understanding theories of learning and applying them to the design of solutions for complex learning challenges? Would you like to learn...
DESIGN297 Designing Solutions to Global Grand Challenges In this course we creatively apply information technologies to collectively attack Global Grand Challenges (e.g., global warming, rising healthcare costs and declining access, and ensuring quality education for all). Interdisciplinary student teams w...
DESIGN301 Introduction to Design Impact Design can change the world. But whether it's for better or worse isn't a static outcome. Your work - like you - will change with time. Sometimes for the better. Sometimes for the worse. This course will introduce you to the powers and responsibiliti...
DESIGN360R Advanced Reflective Practice The Advanced Reflective Practice supports students in developing as adaptive learners who are able to synthesize and integrate their experiences from across the program and beyond. Combining high-touch immersive interactions and asynchronous explorat...
DESIGN361A MS Design Capstone Project 1 The class is a deep dive in design thinking that uses student-led projects to teach design process and methods. Students will learn the methodologies of design thinking by bringing a product, service, or user-experience design to fruition/impact in t...
DESIGN361B MS Design Capstone Project 2 This is a continuation of ME316A / DESIGN361A. The class is a deep dive in design thinking that uses student-led projects to teach design process and methods. Students will learn the methodologies of design thinking by bringing a product, service, or...
DESIGN361C MS Design Capstone Project 3 For graduate Design Impact students, and select students by application, who have completed ME316A &B / DESIGN361A&B. Students, under the supervision of the design faculty, spend the quarter documenting their Idea to Impact projects, implementing the...
DESIGN365 Advanced Creative Studies Advanced creative studies is a studio course for advanced students to take their visual design work to a higher level. Students will work on multiple elective visual design projects in areas of their choosing. The class format will include presentat...
DESIGN374A CREATIVITY IN RESEARCH Creativity in Research Scholars is for Stanford PhD students across all disciplines. In addition to their primary research activities, these individuals are learning and applying design thinking to push the boundaries of their work and create entirel...
DESIGN374B Creativity in Research Creativity in Research Scholars is for Stanford PhD students across all disciplines. In addition to their primary research activities, these individuals are learning and applying design thinking to push the boundaries of their work and create entirel...
DESIGN391 Graduate Independent Study and Research Directed study and research for graduates on a subject of mutual interest to student and staff member. Student must find faculty sponsor and have approval of adviser.
DESIGN391A Curricular Practical Training For graduate students. Meets the requirements for curricular practical training for students on F-1 visas. Student is responsible for arranging own internship/employment and faculty sponsorship. Register under faculty sponsor's section number. All pa...